Latest UN Climate Talks Collapsing

The headline of this AFP “news” story certainly shows no bias at all, nosiree, but you can file it under “Feel Good Story of the Day” anyway:

UN Deadlocked, Detached from Climate Emergency

Madrid (AFP) – A UN climate summit in Madrid risked collapsing Saturday after marathon negotiations between countries left them more divided than ever over on how to fight global warming and pay for its ravages.

Diplomats from rich nations, emerging giants and the world’s poorest countries — each for their own reasons — found fault in a draft agreement put forward by host Chile in a botched attempt to strike common ground.

Faced with five-alarm warnings from science, deadly extreme weather made worse by climate change, and weekly strikes by millions of young people, negotiations in Madrid were under pressure to send a clear signal that governments were willing to double down in tackling the crisis.

But the 12-day talks, now deep into overtime, had retreated even further from this goal on Saturday. “It appears that we are going backwards on the issue of ambition when we should be calling for a quantum leap in the other direction,” Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege said. . .

Veteran observers of UN climate talks were stunned by the state of play nearly 24 hours after the negotiations had been set to close.

“I have never seen such a disconnect between what the science requires and the people of the world demand, versus what the climate negotiations are delivering,” Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP. Alexandria Villasenor, a 14-year-old climate activist, said she had been “disappointed” in the lack of action at COP 25.

How is this failure possible? St. Greta of Thunberg—Time‘s Person of the Year!— was there, telling the adults in the room to get busy. Why don’t they listen to her!? Why? Why?

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